The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched the newest addition to its multi-billion-euro Copernicus program. The monitoring network aims to track pollution, deforestation, weather, and other changes on Earth's surface. Sentinel 2 scans earth's vegetation The Sentinel-2B satellite entered orbit on Tuesday after blasting off from ESA's launch site Kourou in French Guiana. Its twin, Sentinel-2A, was launched in 2015. Both of the satellites are a part of a fleet set up for ESA's Copernicus Earth Monitoring program, which is the world's largest environmental monitoring project, according to the agency.

New data from the Consumer Technology Association finds that for 60% of Americans, the smartphone is now a vital part of purchasing goods and services.

Consumer Reports, an influential US non-profit watchdog that conducts extensive reviews of cars, kitchen appliances and other goods, is gearing up to start considering cyber security and privacy safeguards when scoring products.

Ride services company Uber Technologies Inc for years has used a secret tool to avoid authorities in markets where its service faced resistance by law enforcement or was banned, the company confirmed on Friday.

At the rate the Americans send satellites into space, you'd be right to ask, is it special anymore? Not very. But the Sentinel-2B satellite launch next week is. It's a "breakthrough" in European technology. Sometimes it's easy to feel an overbearing sense of lag in Europe. You look to the west and see America, with what seems like a million-and-one satellite or other rocket launches every other day. Most often they involve commercial operators - SpaceX, Orbital ATK, United Launch Alliance...

The panel tasked with investigating the scandal uncovered rampant cronyism and incomptence from the EU level down. The problem is much bigger than Volkswagen, the committee found. VW Volkswagen Abgas Skandal (picture-alliance/dpa/J. Stratenschulte) A European Parliament committee found on Tuesday that the "Dieselgate" scandal that engulfed Volkswagen last year was not only the fault of the German automaker, but was in fact the result of a complete lack of oversight on the part of the European Union itself and the governments of several member nations in particular.

Private aerospace firm SpaceX said on Monday that it plans to fly two tourists to the moon in late 2018. This is the first time such a venture has been attempted since the US Apollo program last sent astronauts on lunar missions in 1972. "We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year," said CEO Elon Musk. The tech billionaire added that the two passengers knew each other, but disclosed few details about them or how much the trip would cost them. Musk said that the two have already paid a significant deposit toward the trip. Flash-Galerie Space Shuttle Challenger

Dust off your Google Glass Explorer editions, according to new data, smart glasses is where the smart money will be in the wearables market over the next five years.

Smartphones are revolutionising the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses, thanks to add-ons and apps that make their ubiquitous small screens into medical devices, researchers say.

For the first time, astronomers have discovered seven Earth-size planets orbiting a single nearby star — and these new worlds could hold life. This cluster of planets is less than 40 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, according to NASA and the Belgian-led research team who announced the discovery Wednesday.

Astronomers have discovered seven new planets which may host liquid water. Their find shows that earth-like planets are even more common in the universe than previously thought. Sieben erdähnliche Planeten um Trappist-1 (NASA/JPL-Caltech ) It is not the first time astronomers have found earth-like planets outside our solar system. But, it is the first time they have found so many of them at one time around one single star.

It's no secret the UK is keen to take a significant slice of the growing space industries pie. And on Tuesday, the government set out its plans for the future. If brought into law, the Draft Spaceflight Bill would allow horizontal flights to the edge of space from spaceports across the UK. Scientists will be able to "conduct vital medical experiments" in zero gravity. The draft legislation also seeks to encourage commercial space businesses and the creation of a "space launch market" in the UK. The aim is to start commercial spaceflight from a UK spaceport by 2020.

Fast isn't the word. If China's Tianhe-3 supercomputer manages to hit the exascale mark, it will handle one quintillion calculations per second. NB: 1 quintillion = 1,000 000 000 000 000 000 (yep, that's 18 zeros) Meng Xiangfei, a director at the National Supercomputer Center at Tianjin, told the China Daily newspaper that his institute aims to have a prototype of its Tianhe-3 ready by 2018. For that they will need breakthroughs in high-performance processors. But Meng is confident. If they succeed, Tianhe-3 will be 10 times faster than the current fastest supercomputer in the world, the Sunway TaihuLight.

If gangs of kids suddenly start loitering in your garden or your favourite corner café appears overrun with people staring excitedly at their smartphone screens this weekend, don't panic, it's just Pokémon Go. The mobile game developed by Niantic that took the world by storm last summer and ended the year having clocked up a remarkable 550 million downloads is getting its first major overhaul since it launched back in July and started setting world records.

The 28th annual Apple developers' conference, WWDC, is to take place over the week of June 5-9, 2017, marking a major opportunity for the company to outline big updates to iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV apps and abilities.

A new malaria immunization method that you tested on 67 healthy individuals was 100 percent successful in the first round of testing. Is this a breakthrough in the fight against malaria? Peter Kremsner: We sure hope so. The success we had with this new approach to malaria immunization surprised us, too. New malaria vaccines have been released quite frequently. What is different about your results? We took the living parasites and put them in a vaccine, which we then gave the individuals together with an anti-malaria drug. That drug is ingested orally. The parasites get into the liver, but the illness only breaks out when they reach the bloodstream - and that's where the anti-malaria drug catches them. It weakens or kills the parasites so that they can't do any harm anymore.

What are the threats for kids online? Official advice on internet safety tends to focus on a few main threats. In late 2015, the UK government published measures to keep children safe online at school and at home. It includes "cyber bullying, pornography and the risk of radicalization" as major threats. It refers to "some school children, who travelled or attempted to travel to Syria, were able to access material about Daesh ["Islamic State" or ISIS] and foreign fighters via school computers."

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is holding a meeting in Harare on how to stop the spreading infestation of the "fall armyworm." The caterpillar has already caused damage to staple crops in Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ghana. There are reports that Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia are also affected.

My daughter keeps asking why the dinosaurs died, and I've been telling her that an asteroid hit the Earth and threw a lot of dust into the air, and that's why the plants couldn't grow anymore so the dinosaurs got hungry and went to sleep and never woke up. (She's four). But that's not exactly right, is it? During the last few years, some research has shown that there was not that much dust, or dust of the right size, that was thrown into the air. But there was sulfur. And then the sulfur in the atmosphere developed into sulfur aerosols. And they can cool down the Earth and block the light.

Silicon Valley is struggling for its life on the issue of immigration. Over 100 tech firms, including Google, Facebook and Apple, have joined the legal battle against President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily barring entry to nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries.